


Love Me, Hate Me (But Please Don't Leave Me)

by Hamimifk (BatchSan)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Banter, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Dave metaphors, F/F, Femslash, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Humor, Infidelity, Quadrant Confusion, Romance, Smut, Teen Angst, Tentabulges, Xeno, but its so minor its basically not there, but not?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:11:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatchSan/pseuds/Hamimifk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Interspecies romance and sexual exploration is hard. Hard and no one understands. </p><p>(Or; Romance and sexual relations, Rose has come to learn, are frightening things in their own ways.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Me, Hate Me (But Please Don't Leave Me)

**Author's Note:**

> My first completed big bang fic, woo! 
> 
> =D The AWESOME [mific](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mific) did art for this! [I HIGHLY recommend you check it out! (NSFW)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/TentacleBang/works/782082)

Benevolence, affection, adoration, devotion, ardor, feeling, fondness, amity, adore, hold dear, be keen on, fancy.

The list of words and phrases could grow and grow with all the years I've spent discovering infinite ways to say a simple word like hate, fear, or acknowledge. Love is no different of a word. I could devote tomes as thick as the circumference of a horrorterrors tentacle and I would still never actually write out the four simple letters of L-O-V-E in their proper order. It's frivolous, I'm aware, but I can't seem to settle on a single word or emotion to accurately describe the depth of sincere joy that resonates in my heart whenever I think or look at one Miss Kanaya Maryam. 'Love' seems like an umbrella term, a catchall, much the way word 'colored' encompasses all races with discernible pigmentations to their skin but doesn't quite adhere to a single ethnicity. No, the word love does not hold the full significance of what I feel for the painfully awkward and beautiful troll.

My, could I be any more clearly enamored? I may as well just drop to my knees at Kanaya's feet and grovel in worship of her in the fashion my heart yearns to do. She would likely glow to a blinding luminescence in embarrassment for the both of us, before settling down enough to shake her head at my sad, pitiful state and admonish me for not living up to the virtuous, stoic, alien woman of her dreams. I've become nothing more than an epitome of the trashy romance novels Kanaya, Karkat, and I indulge too much time into -- Kanaya, the beautiful creature that sweeps maidens off their feet, and I, the maiden.

A maiden in dire longing for an unexplored section between her beloved's legs. Namely a certain wiggly appendage she knows her beloved possesses, of which she has desired for far longer than she has known her alien girlfriend and what should not be feasible for someone of only seventeen human years of age to know of or want so strongly. Surely Freud would have a field day inside the minds of the Lalondes and Striders. It would be a orgasmic gala for him, actually, and it would likely end with him suggesting an orgy for the screwed up four of us.

Excellent, now I'm slipping into Strider nonsensical tangent ramblings. Clearly, I ought to be put out of my misery before my embarrassment causes me to spontaneously combust into a cloud of rainbow confetti in honor of my beloved's title as Rainbow Drinker. Or, at the very least, rainbow confetti in celebration of my epical ascension into the ranks of queerness that I blasted through much faster than I did my Echeladder. 

Ah, 'queer', another of those catchall, umbrella terms. 

And I've come full circle in my thoughts. 

Somewhere aboard this rock, Dave is grinning ironically beneath his shades, possibly.

"Are you feeling well?"

Kanaya's voice snaps me out of my reverie and I can feel the gentle burn of a blush spread across my face. As composed as ever, I set down the book I had held open for an indeterminable amount of time before my face, without having absorbed a single word before me. Folding my hands over it, I look up at the troll that has recently been the subject of my thoughts and offer her a light smile.

"It depends what your definition of 'well' is."

As I had expected, my statement makes her brow furrow slightly as she tries to decipher what underlying meaning hides behind my words. None, honestly, but she wouldn't understand an explanation of my just screwing with her as an acceptable, or fully truthful, answer, even though it is this time around. I sometimes worry I've schooled her too well in the art of human psychology and sarcasm, or perhaps not well enough. She crosses her arms and settles on giving me the kind of look a parent would give a troublesome child.

"Don't worry," I finally give in. "I'm well, in all meanings of the word. What can I do for you, dear?"

Unsurprisingly, she doesn't look convinced but she lets it go and slides her fingers delicately through my hair just behind my headband. Her nails scrape at my scalp gently and given part of my recent thoughts, it takes a lot to suppress a shudder at the feeling. Biting the inside of my lip helps greatly, but my breath, when I speak again, shudders enough to give away enough of what her fingers have done to me. A flash of a fanged smile crosses jade painted lips in acknowledgement. Shit.

"I was wondering if you would join me for a snack? You've been lost in books all morning, especially that one." She indicates the book in my lap with a small nod. "Is it good?"

"It's fine. Not as poignant as Nietzsche, enthralling as Hemingway, or imaginative as Seuss, but fine enough." I thank the gods that Kanaya has no idea whom Nietzsche, Hemingway, or Seuss are. She looks thoughtful for a moment and nods acceptance to my reply. "And a snack sounds like a fine idea. Will we snack together or am I to be the meal in question?"

Kanaya's eyes linger a little too long at my neck before she shakes her head slowly as if already regretting her answer. "I’ve prepared some tea and cookies for us."

Her tone could not have been more mournful if she tried. 

Placing the book on the floor and standing, I trail my hands over hers, up her arms, and lace my fingers behind her neck. If I want to kiss her, I'll have to stand on the tips of my toes unless she leans down, but I'm content at the moment with just looking up at her. I never thought I would take so much pleasure from simply looking at someone, studying the same features I've studied many, many times before. She blushes, her skin kicking up the luminescence she had learnt to control several months ago. Despite the glow, I can still see the permanent indent in her lip where she worries her fang too much against it. Pressing my palms firmly against the back of her neck, Kanaya gets the hint and stoops down to meet my lips. Tracing a fang and then the indent on her lip with the tip of my tongue, I hum when she moans softly into the kiss.

Something in my stomach clenches, seeking more than I was willingly to admit to. With effort, I remove my lips from hers and smile at Kanaya's dreamy expression. It was a short moment of reprieve in which I could take a few seconds to both be vulnerable and mask my desire for her without worry that she would see either too well through her giddy fog. By the time she is focused again, my face is the pinnacle of neutral.

"Perhaps after tea and cookies, I might allow you a moment to quench your insatiable thirst for blood at my expense."

"You don't need to, Rose. I am fine," she assures with her eyes wide.

Kissing her cheek before drawing away from her completely, and reluctantly, I smile knowingly. 

"That doesn't mean you don't desire it and as your girlfriend-sprit, I'm capable of making the time to tend to your desires from time to time. More than willing, even."

*

"So have you two bumped uglies yet?"

Pursing my lips at Dave over the rim of my cup, I raise an eyebrow at him. "Do I need to schedule a session for you?"

"What? Shit no. I don't mean it in one of your fucked up psychobabble ways." Taking a long swig of coffee from his cup, he rests his chin on his fist, elbow propping him up on the table between us. "I'm asking as one sibling to another. As one friend to another. As one coffee drinking buddy to another. As one enjoyer of the fairer sex to another. Besides, John never wants to talk about his and his crazy spiderlady's sex life, or lack thereof, or whatever they have going. See, I don't know because he refuses to talk about it. Says it ain’t gentleman-like to discuss that type of thing."

"Your girlfriend has a tentacle dick," I point out, purposely ignoring the rest of his rambling.

"I never said it was the human fairer sex, just meant chicks in general. Plus, so does your girlfriend. Standard troll equipment, you know?"

"So I've been told." I take a long sip of my coffee as Dave's mouth draws down at the corners in a frown.

"Seriously, you two haven't? I would've thought with your constant boner for knowledge on everything, you would have been all up under her skirt by now. The two of you eyefuck each other enough to suggest otherwise. Sometimes you two do it so much that I feel violated by all that heated eyefucking. It's almost like standing in the corner of your mom's bedroom and being forced to watch her and her girlfriend in the middle of heated throes. You don't know how you got there but you want to get away, except she doesn't know you're there and the bedroom door is locked up tighter than a chastity device so there's no fucking way you're getting out of there without making a peep. All that's left to do is look anywhere but the bed and hope that after enough years of therapy, maybe one day you'll get over your immense fear of creaking beds and locked doors."

"Dave, you're rambling, and you're getting Freudian slips all over our best dishes. The stains are going to be horrendous to scrub out of the crevices."

Dave just shakes his head like he's disappointed in me. "Why haven't you fully explored your troll lady's choice piece of ass yet?"

"I can only hope you use the sanctity of your ironic shades to only scope out my girlfriend's ass and not mine as well."

"Rose..."

With a heavy sigh, as if he's asking me to outright decide whether the chicken or the egg came first, I slump forward slightly onto my elbows and pick absently at a sandwich crumb from the meal we had just been eating.

"I can't really say. I think I want our first time to be perfect - candles, rose petals, soft music in the background. But even then, for the vast library of books at my beck and call aboard this Meteor, I've yet to find one to help adequately assess what I should expect from alien anatomy, much less something that offers up a comprehensive way to go about the exploration of said genitalia."

There's a long moment of silence that drives me to look up at my brother's face. I'm expecting confusion wrinkling the corners of his mouth or suppressed laughter that's a twitch over his stoic expression, but what I find is a bit more disconcerting. His mouth is agape in a very un-Strider-esque fashion. I begin to think I broke him until he starts talking again, slowly and in disbelief.

"Look, sis, you can't research everything. Interspecies sexytimes can only be approached in a hands-on kind of way. That is, your hands on your lady's tentacle dick. You're over complicating a very simple and primal urge you both feel. For once in your life, Rose, you can't bury your nose in a book and find all the answers before you take your final exam. School's about to end and you only have your name on the exam paper. You need to guess the answers as fast as possible and even if you pick all Cs on that shit, at least you tried and that's all that matters."

"While I appreciate your top notch and metaphorically lined advice, I'm going to have to politely dismiss it in lieu of the age old argument that you're a guy and I'm a girl. You can't possibly understand how much more emotion goes into the act of sex for us. We get off more on the aesthetics of it than the actual act."

"Lalonde, that is the weakest cop out I have ever heard come from your mouth. I'm almost ashamed right now to say we're related."

Narrowing my eyes at him, I sip from my cup again before favoring him with a reply.

"I apologize for disappointing you, dear ecto-brother."

Sighing, Dave adjusts his shades unnecessarily. "Why don't you just ask one of the other trolls aboard this floating rock about it then? It won't be the end of the world if you do, because that already happened - the world ending - and it had nothing to do with you inquiring how your alien girlfriend's junk worked. I don't recommend asking Terezi though as she's as fucking elusive as you are with answers. Way more than you, actually. Plus, she tends to be a more tongue-on type if you catch my drift."

I nod.

"Karkat is a screaming bitch –- not to down him or anything, it’s just a simple truth -- so he's out of the question. I guess you could ask the crazy clown if you can find him, but the only real option you have here, aside from your girl, is--"

"Gog, don't say it," I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"Either talk to the spidertroll or continue to inappropriately eyefuck Kanaya in front of the rest of us. Keep fucking up our already fragile psyches with all your unresolved sexual tension and someone is going to lock the two of you in a closet until you both kiss with all your clothes off and get it over with already. Besides, if trolls have the same sex drive, then your girl wants to bump all the uglies with you. Badly. You just got with the one that's too polite to say so out loud."

If it were possible, I would have loved to curl up in some forgotten corner and disappear right then and there at the bitter realization that Dave was right. As much as I loathed the idea of asking for help on this matter, I would have to do it before my sexual needs consumed me like grimdark had.

I need to speak with Vriska.

*

It's not simple to approach Vriska in a calm mannerism. Something about her incites agitation and a deep ire within my chest that I can't fully explain. Her cockiness disgusts me and her sheer disregard for others in lieu of her own benefits makes me want to tap into those grimdark words that whisper at the back of my mind and do unspeakably horrible things to her. I have consulted many books on troll relationships in the past about it and have made the unsurprising realization these were all the ripe signs of the beginning of a kismesissitude, though it largely depended on Vriska's own hate of me and how deeply it ran. Apparently, living with trolls has rubbed off on those of the human demeanor -- not that some of our mannerisms and quirks hadn't worn off on the trolls as well, though to a lesser extent.

Vriska slams three doors in my face, spills four cups of coffee in my lap - two hot - and blatantly walks by me twice without a word when I try to speak to her. In short, I say we were a hate kiss away from a full blown calignous-themed soap opera, which would have been okay had that been a goal I had been attempting to obtain, but it wasn't, so it only served to infuriate me more than anything. I eventually secure a relatively safe few moments to speak to her in the kitchen while she's working her way through some kind of questionable looking gray glob of food covered generously in something I've learned to be grubsauce, a troll type of ketchup, essentially. She ignores me at first, but eventually my cold glare cuts through her enjoyment of the meal.

"Want some?" she asks with generous amounts of slop in her mouth.

"I need to speak with you, once you're less preoccupied with the nauseating mastication you would currently dare to call eating."

She swallows her mouthful, studies me for a moment, and takes another bite before replying. My fists clench tightly at my sides.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"At the moment? Proper table etiquette."

There's a chuckle from somewhere in her throat.

"I'm good."

I haven't even gotten to the whole point of this unnecessary deviation from my life and already a headache is forming. It promises to get worst the longer I attempt to speak with the troll, but I know I have to push forward.

"Can we speak somewhere more private?" I ask in what I hope is a civil and non-threatening tone of voice.

This makes her narrow her eyes and regards me suspiciously. She pushes her food away and crosses her arms, mulling over my query with as much painstaking annoyance as she can. Finally, she shrugs and stands with a smirk.

"Well, it's not like you can kill me."

I could give into grimdarkness and do worst to her, but I opt not to say anything, as tempting as it is. It would be a moot point anyway, as I have no plans to ever give into those unspeakable urges ever again, so I would end up sounding only childish by saying otherwise.

"Nor you I," I reply coolly instead and lead her away from the kitchen. 

We wander through winding corridors, up and down stairs, until I feel we're somewhere far enough away from the others. I recognize the area vaguely from past meanderings and am able to find a functional enough room containing a table and several folding chairs inside. Closing the door behind us, Vriska wastes no time in getting comfortable and looking as smug as she can manage without falling out of her chair. I take the seat across from her, placing my fingertips lightly on the slightly dusty surface and idly wonder who might have used this room previously, and when because the dust wasn't thick enough to have been here for more than a few weeks, if that. Also, yes, I was trying to put off the inevitable.

"Well?" Vriska says, rolling the _'l’_ until it seems she's impossibly enunciated it eight times.

"I suppose it would be best to be as blunt and as forthright as possible. As much as it pains me, and please know that it pains me immensely, I need to ask you for a rather large favor."

Interest piqued, she leans forward, stirring up dust from the table with a propped elbow.

"What is this favor in regards to?"

"I suspect there's a myriad of answers, all of which boil down to the same thing. Put simply, it's about my relationship with Kanaya."

"Are you going to break up with her?" There’s a hint of surprise in her eyes.

"No."

"If it's advice on what to get her for her wiggling day, you're on your own. There's limited options given our location and Fussyfangs will adore anything you give her anyway."

"This isn't in regards to her birthday."

A sigh and a look of exasperation are directed at me.

"What the fuck is it then?"

It takes a long time for me to put together the words for my answer and by the time I do, Vriska looks like she's deeply regretting agreeing to talk with me. The look doesn't make my ability to answer any easier.

"It's in regards to troll genitalia," I finally say.

A devious smile breaks out on her face and there's a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Lalonde, are saying what I think you are?"

"If you demand to take so much pleasure from this, then no, I am not asking you to teach me the ways to sexually please a troll so that I might get beneath my girlfriend-sprit's skirt and blow her mind."

That did not come out even remotely how I had intended it to. To dip into Karkat's colorful array of words - fuck my glubsucking life.

Her smile can probably cure cancer with the way it was suddenly radiating. I feel mildly disturbed; it is that caustically nauseating and bright. She leans back in her seat, her wings folded neatly behind her in a way that I cannot fathom to be comfortable, but she seems not to notice. Her shit-eating grin grows wider with each second as she savors the fact that Rose Lalonde is asking her not only for advice, something that would have normally surmounted to submitting to torture before it would have been done before, but is asking her for a very large, and intimate, favor. Anyone seeing Vriska's expression right now would assume she just obtained world domination. Paradoxical space domination, even.

This is officially becoming the single worst idea of the entire of my life.

"I don't think John would be too pleased with one of his good friends soliciting his matesprit for sex," she says, that smile not dropping from her lips for a second.

Standing abruptly, my chair skids backward almost tipping over as I round the table and grab a fistful of Vriska's mangy mess of hair. The last look I catch of hers is one of earnest surprise when I yank her back so hard her chair loses the battle with gravity and slams down to the ground, spilling her unceremoniously onto the floor. Like this, her wings, possibly in surprise, are spread out and the comparison to a pinned butterfly is hard not to make. She attempts to hiss in pain but my mouth quickly presses tightly against hers, her fangs cutting into my lips as my tongue pushes into her slightly agape mouth. Her course, alien tongue tries to push my tongue out but I tug her hair until the pain makes her give up with a whine of breath and she wraps a hand around my throat instead. Claws dig into my flesh but I refuse to relent until it's hard to breathe between my violent smashing of our lips and her hand tightening more and more at my throat. Pulling back, reluctantly, I take pleasure in seeing diluted cerulean tears prickling the corners of her eyes from how tightly I'd been holding her hair. She lets go of my throat in equal reluctance.

"Are you sure you can handle it, Lalonde? You're toeing the line between a favor and calignous hatetimes. I'm more than sure you can't handle the repercussions this will cause with your weird human guilt and really stupid human infidelity issues." Though she tries to sound nonplussed, her breath is heavy as she speaks.

"And what about you and John? You already seem keen to agreement on this issue without even considering your boyfriend-sprit. He's not going to be happy when he finds out his girlfriend-sprit is traversing the sapphic road with one of his close friends."

"You can't flip this on me, Lalonde, but for the record, John doesn't have to find out."

"Neither does Kanaya."

It's not a question and we both know it. It is stupid and irresponsible what we're both planning, and I really hate to admit that Vriska has a fair point about the inevitable guilt I'm going to feel about this. And yet, I've never been one to back down from a complex challenge, and the sexual conquest of Vriska Serket is a fascinating one even though it isn't my primary goal. My primary goal here is of course, to learn how interspecies sex would, or if it could, work. Mostly, I wanted the sneak preview to avoid embarrassing myself with Kanaya. Petty, I'm aware.

Movement against my thigh startles me. Vriska smirks as she brings her hands to my hips, holding me lightly to give me the option to get up and leave if I want but letting me know that I'm more than welcomed to stay if the strange movement within her jeans is anything to go by. I'm ashamed to admit that in the end, it's that very movement that causes me to stay and seek out her lips again. I'm bleeding from where fangs have cut into my lips, so I take it slow this time and she reciprocates in kind. It's weird, Vriska being gentle, as though I had assumed she was incapable of doing anything gently, but perhaps her time with John had helped smooth out some of her rougher edges. After a moment, she ends up rolling me off of her, my head thumping the floor a little harder than I would have preferred it to and there we go - that makes more sense coming from Vriska than gentle kissing did.

She did kiss exceptionally well though. A confession I plan to take to my immortal grave.

Claws paint angry red lines against the soft flesh of my arms as Vriska takes a moment to examine me in a rarely seen vulnerable position. Had she not been sitting on my legs, I may have tried to kick her in the chest to even things out. Instead, I opt to sneer at her and slide my fingers up her thighs. This makes her visibly buck, but unfortunately for me her new position makes it hard to see that odd movement I had felt a moment ago because of the way her baggy jeans tented out at the crotch with her thighs spread open the way they currently are. And perhaps she wore some kind of underwear beneath, further blocking my view of what lied beneath. Kanaya wore panties, I had seen as much during brief dress up plays we had done in the past, but she had commented once that most trolls did not, for whatever reasons of their own. Again I wonder if modesty is a thing she has learned from John or if it was just a thing she did beforehand.

"Do you want my bulge that bad, Lalonde?" she asks, bringing her hand up to play with her zipper absently. "I'm pretty sure humans like a certain amount of foreplay before they engage in sex, at least the males do from my experience. Trolls don't need it as much, but even we need enough to get our bulges unsheathed. You hungrily eying a troll's crotch isn’t really foreplay, even if you do have something fun to look forward to in my jeans."

"Fuck you, Serket," I manage to say as politely as possible. "For your information, human females need foreplay even more so than the males as it takes more than the sight of our partners naked to arouse us. So I pose the question, what do you plan to do now?"

This rattles her enough to bring a small, victorious smile to my face. 

"Well that blows. You humans are so weird."

"Says the creature with two types of genitalia."

"Ugh, don't remind me of your weird human crotch. What's the fun of only having one? Anyway, at this rate, you're going to kill the mood completely and I'll be forced to tell your matesprit that you suck at foreplay and she's doomed to a relationship filled with shitty sex."

Digging my sadly blunt nails into her thighs, I hope I'm exuding enough pressure for her to understand she is tiptoeing into dangerous ground with her words right now. Instead of backing off, she leans into me and openly chuckles in my face so I can see her sharp teeth clearly.

"Did I strike a nerve?" she asks. "Was it the part where I said you're a shitty lover or that I was going to tell Fussyfangs?"

I slap her at that, my blood boiling at the way she only laughs harder. Burying my fingers again in her hair, I find and press my nails into the base of her horns. With a satisfying choke, Vriska stops laughing, twitching in something between pain and pleasure as I drag my nails up her horns. This is something I'm glad to have some knowledge of. My willing girlfriend-sprit, while initially hesitant, now fully enjoys my hands exploring her horns when we engage in sloppy interspecies makeouts. I can easily get pleasing reactions out of her from the top and middle sections of her horns, but the bottom, and especially the base where horn gave way to skin and vica versa, I've found draw out the best reactions from her.

Apparently, it translates to a universal troll thing because Vriska clicks in pleasure deep in her throat. Now that I have some leverage over her, I feel much better about this whole thing. 

Using her horns, I maneuver her off of me and back onto her back, not caring when one of her wings gets trapped crookedly behind her back. Straddling her hips, I move my hands higher up her horns so the pleasure still buzzes through her but at a much lesser intensity. Hazy, blue speckled eyes meet mine after a moment where she struggles to catch her breath. Vriska looks deliciously debauched in that moment, the same way Kanaya does afterward. I would lie if I say I wasn't half tempted to leave her hanging in much the same way I've done to Kanaya numerous times. 

Dave was right; I had found the one troll too polite to ask for sex. The thoughts combined make me feel guilty.

"Does this constitute as enough foreplay for you?" I ask, pushing the guilt out of my mind for the moment.

It takes her three tries before she can wet her throat enough to respond. 

"Fuck, Lalonde," she growls, clearly unable to wrap her mind around anything more coherent than that.

"Is that an offer or an insult?" I smirk down at her.

She doesn't bother with words, only grabs my hips roughly and rolls us over once again. Hands slide beneath my God Tier top and my leggings are stripped violently from my legs, scratches and cuts forming here and there. I have no idea how I'm going to keep Kanaya from seeing all these recently acquired wounds, especially my lips, but maybe it helps that we're not sexually intimate, yet. Unless she asks me to pose for an outfit fitting, in which case, I'm screwed magnificently. Despite her haze of arousal, once my leggings and panties are gone, Vriska parts my thighs to investigate between them. The blush that rises to my cheeks seems justified given the situation, though it still feels foolish given I'll be doing the same thing to her as soon as I could.

Maybe it's just that no one else has looked between my legs like this since I was in diapers and even then I'm certain there wasn't such a heavy amount of ogling going on. Something has to be said though for the curious way she touches my folds and even the sparse hair on my mound above. It allows me to assess and guess more or less what to expect of troll anatomy. My breath hitches sharply when she runs a thumb over my clit and shoots me a puzzled look.

"What the fuck is this?"

"It's a magic button."

Her brows furrow as she passes her thumb over it again making me shiver and my hips buck slightly at the touch. The next past involves just the tip of her claw, lightly, and I curse, cringe, and moan all at once. I believe that is a clear sign my leverage over her horns has just gone out the window, though I silently hope I'm wrong. However, the shit-eating grin from earlier has returned to Vriska's face as she repeats the action, going the opposite direction. Fucking hell - there was no way something like that should hurt and feel so good at the same time. 

"So tell me, Lalonde, what will happen if I continue to do this? It's not nearly as fun for me as what I can do to you with my bulge but your reactions are delectable. It would pain me to stop if I don't have to."

I laugh, dryly, and swallow back a groan as she flicks the pad of her thumb against me again. "I'd rather you just fuck me, to be honest, but for courtesy sake, if you continue to stimulate my clitoris like that, I'll come long before you get a chance to get your bulge into me."

I can see her seriously consider this information and I smile calmly up at her. If her sexual knowledge only goes as far as a human male, than it's likely she expects that once I come, as a human, I'll be sexually useless for a time, perhaps long enough not to want to do anything about the presumed twitching appendage in her pants. Eventually, she looks annoyed and retracts her hand as if she's making a great sacrifice in doing so. In trepidation, I watch her undo her jeans, standing to slide them off her narrow hips. Beneath are a pair of black boy boxers with a clear bulging lump shifting restlessly about beneath the material. Seeing my expression and mistaking it for longing or anticipation, Vriska makes a show of removing the black underwear and I'm finally drinking in my first sight of troll genitalia. 

No hair, not that I expected any as trolls seemed to be a mostly hairless below the neck species, and her mound is smaller than a normal human female's. Presumably, this allows room for the tentacle to extend from within her body where a womb should be. It's a pretty straightforward design and I'm sitting up without realizing it, tilting my head to get a look beneath the wiggling, slightly blue, appendage. Tracing my fingers beneath the tentacle, I can feel the small seam where it will coil back into when we're done. I follow it around the base of the tentacle, gauging her reaction before moving my fingers further down. I find a short, smooth expanse of gray skin below before my fingers slide inside her. Vriska moans as I scissor my fingers, trying to garner the pliability of her nook, as the trolls so fondly refer to it as. It feels surprisingly like a normal human's vagina, but slightly thicker, if that makes sense. Moving my fingers in further and deeper is met only with a tremble of Vriska's fingers as she touches them to my hair. It's enough to bring me back to the other bit of her anatomy I had been ignoring.

Grasping the base of the tentacle with my free hand, the fingers of my other hand still lodged in her nook, I slide my fingertips over the slightly slimy surface. The whole thing shudders independently of the troll's other movements, which consist at the moment of a buck of hips and fingers grabbing my hair roughly. At the tip, I watch in fascination as it slips over my hand as if attempting to identify it. Translucent blue-tinted slime paints my pale flesh as the tip moves down to my wrist and settles on coiling around it; the rest of the tentacle following suit around my hand. Just to test out its strength, I tug my hand away. It holds on as best it can but the slimy surface makes it slip easily off - Vriska groans and bites her lip.

"Rose..." she sighs when I trace my fingers along her length.

"Yes?" I ask, my lips dangerously close to her skin as my fingers twist within her. Vriska violently shivers.

"Can I pail you now?"

"You're actually asking me?"

A frustrated sigh. "Yes. John taught me it was a polite thing to do, not that you deserve it, but I rather not freak you out by forcing myself on you."

"Thank you," I say mildly, meaning it.

Rocking my fingers in and out of her nook a few times, I relent when she actually whimpers and her tentacle wiggles desperately at my forearm. Leaning back on my elbows, I arch my eyebrow at her and she melts down to her knees in relief. Laying down the rest of the way, I bring my hips up at her urging and she arranges herself between my legs. My body shivers in trepidation as my mind reels through a flood of emotions. Guilt is the first of them - the leader of the pack ahead of fear, worry, panic, and desire. At this point, I'm not even sure what will come of this arrangement with Vriska, whether this is solely a single act of indiscretion behind our partners' backs or if this could bloom into something dark and blackrom in nature. And of course, there was Kanaya to think about. 

Kanaya. Kanaya. Kanaya.

My heart aches sadly, but not completely regretful of my current actions and situation. I'm doing this for her, I remind myself. Had she been human, this would not have even been a thing that would have needed to happen, but since she's not, then I deem it a necessity. It's a flimsy validation to myself, but the best I can think of considering my current state of affairs.

The tip of Vriska's tentacle touches first my inner thigh, then the crease where my leg and the apex of my thighs meet. I cry out softly when it brushes against my clit, the translucent blue slime on it makes stars dance behind my eyelids as it slides easily against it. Vriska is clenching her jaw as the tentacle slides between my folds and finally finds it way inside of me slowly. I clench her forearms as it pushes deeper in; Vriska bites her lip roughly in response. It's about halfway in before I feel the widening girth stretching me in a painful way. Shifting only slightly eases the pain, but eventually I feel tears forming in my eyes as the pain becomes close to too much, and then, blessedly, Vriska is flush against me. We're both panting now, unsure what or who should move first. 

With a roll of her hips, Vriska decides she'll get the party started. Her tentacle appendage seems to agree and flickers within me, curling and uncurling itself near the tip. Breathing becomes a foreign art to me, one I forget to do almost immediately. When she retracts her hips slightly and slaps them back against me, I tremble and gasp so sharply I imagine my lungs deflating in an impossible cartoonish fashion around the single sound. Blue lips twitch in a smile but fall apart as hips repeat their previous movement, pulling away and slamming back. For leverage, she pulls one of my legs up and holds it up to her waist. My nails bite into her arms as she settles on a rhythm, a low stream of curses fall from her mouth as my grip tightens. The pain between my legs eases up after a few thrusts but it's still hard getting used to the feeling of the strange appendage moving about inside me, still independent of its owner. It eventually settles on curling around itself, forming a strong loop of tentacle that bangs into my cervix with each of Vriska's forward thrusts.

I am an incoherent babble of curse words and eldritch tongues, tongues I thought I had been freed of. I try to tell Vriska that it hurts, to ease up a little, but I'm beyond capable of speaking English and she's too busy making growling, clicking noises deep in her throat to notice my lack of coherent communication. With one hand, I tug her shoulders down to me. It takes a moment before she relents enough to lean over me the way I want, and as soon as she realizes it doesn't mess up her movements, she makes no complaints as I bury one hand in her hair and clench her bicep in a death grip with the other. After several tries, I finally manage some English and growl them into her ear.

"That's the best you can do?"

Vriska glares at me and growls dangerously. With effort well deserving of applause, she thrusts and grinds her mound into my clit and bites down hard on my shoulder, sharp teeth breaking the skin easily. The part where I then begin bleeding is bad, I know it is, but that combined with the grinding and thrusting is exactly what I'm looking for as I feel my body grow tense against hers, a silent moan on my lips as I orgasm in a way I wasn't aware could be possible before. Through it, Vriska seems momentarily confused until my vaginal walls clench tightly around her tentacle and she cries out loudly in my ear; the sound temporarily deafening me on the one side. Her mouth finds my bleeding wound, clamping down on it until I hiss and she pulls away with a small, cocky smile, lips a mess of blue, red, and black.

"Good enough for you?"

"As well as one would expect from someone like you," I reply calmly and apathetically. 

"Jegus, why did I even bother to help you? You should consider yourself lucky I did! But of course, you'll be all _'I'm peachy, fret not'_ or some other musclebeast shit." She peels herself off of me, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and looking down only to pause and frown. "Did you pail at all? Please don't tell me you release less genetic material than a human male does!"

Her look of horror makes me laugh as I sit up weakly, body sore in places it had never been before. Perhaps a week of bed rest would heal me. Not that was an actual viable option with Dave and Kanaya's constant worry of me. In my new seated position, I can see a rather large puddle of blue fluid on the floor where Vriska had been kneeling at. Well, that certainly answers the question as to where a troll's come came from and the answer was clearly not the tentacle, though I was slimy from where it had been inside of me. Reaching between my legs, I blush lightly as I slide two of my fingers through all the wetness that has accumulated between my labia lips. My fingers come back tinged slightly blue and it takes several tries before they come away clear, but wet.

"The genetic material of a human female is translucent, and for the large majority of us, is far less in abundance than our male counterparts. I apologize for my shocking lack of viable pail material."

"You humans are so fucking weird."

"Vriska?"

"What?"

"I hate you."

A smiling sneer replaces the look of confused disgust. "I fucking hate you too, Lalonde."

What in the heavens have I just done?

*

"Either one of the trolls made a pile of knives that you accidentally tripped into, or you finally got your first taste of romping around in a pile of something with a troll."

I grimace at Dave as he smirks and folds his hands behind his head, leaning back in his chair. If it weren't for the fact that all smirks as of late instantly remind me of Her, than I would have had a prime quip to flounder him with. As it was, my fingertips twitch slightly and I have to fold them in my lap to keep them from making any other involuntary, telling movements. Schooling my features as best as I can - digging deep into my memories of passive-aggressive warfare with my mother to do so, something I hadn't had to do in a long while - I manage to look bored with the question.

"It would be unusual even for a troll, with all their underlying savagery, to make a pile of knives that one could easily fall into or roll about in without fatal injury. If I had to guess, and this is an educated guess, I assure you, dear brother, I would have to assume you mean the knives to be penises and you are in fact referring to your desire to fall into a pile of penises to sate your barely concealed homo-erotic desires."

"Come the fuck on!" Dave groans, slumping in his seat. "I swear it's you with the heavy desire for some cock, or rather, freaky, alien tentabulges."

"We're not speaking about me right now, dear brother."

"Fuck yes we are. Drop the psychoanalyst stuff and let's get real here about this. Despite your usual expression of doom and gloom, you've been glowing for the last three days straight. As your brother, I reserve the right to know whose name I should be engraving at the edge of my sword for popping your cherry. Kanaya's name is already there, but that's just a given. I don't think she was the one you let tickle your ovaries though."

It is too easy to make a Freudian jab at him right now, so I opt to remain silent, studying his turntables in something nearing rapt fascination. Dave lapses into silence as well, waiting me out even though it's a futile effort, one that we are both aware of. If it were not for constant recent thoughts, I may have been content in sitting there with him in silence until oblivion came and rotted away every cell of our beings. Instead, I find myself pursing my lips slightly as I contemplate how much exactly to tell my brother, because the truth is that I need to speak to someone about this, like it or not. It's a repetitive problem I really had to work on.

"If we're allowed to pursue this subject from a hypothetical point of view, a purely hypothetical one, at that, I may be willing to speak more on the matter. In accordance with strict doctor-patient confidentiality, of course."

"Shit, so I'm the doctor now? I can dig that. Doctor Strider at your service. Drop five cents in the can, take a seat, and let's hypothetically discuss your ascent into adulthood."

"I'll allot you points for the Peanuts reference." 

Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I begin to divulge a family-friendly version of my encounter with Vriska. Dave remains quietly impassive the whole time I speak, occasionally 'hmming' or nodding more for dramatic effect than actual effectiveness toward anything I say. He proves to be adept at playing the role of doctor and I will have to find a way to congratulate him at a later date when I wasn't in actual need of authentic advice. 

"Did you really tell her that you hated her when it was over?" he asks once I have lapsed into silence at the end of my tale.

I nod, clenching my jaw at where this line of questioning could possibly go. 

"Rose, as your doctor-slash-brother, I'm deeply concerned about your mental health because that sounds like the beginning of some prime troll blackrom drama shit. And it's with one of your good buddies' girlfriend. More importantly, it's with the crazy spidertroll bitch that's killed more people than times you've made penis jokes at my expense. I'm not in prime advice giving position when it comes to bat-shit crazy girlfriends, no wait, I am. So I'm gonna lay this out plain for you, Lalonde. My cards are all face up on the table and I'm telling you I have no hidden aces up my rad god tier pajamas sleeves. Abscond away from that shit as fast as you can because you're going to end up with blood on your hands and it's going to be blue and red and I'll have to hold Terezi back so she doesn't lick away the crime scene. Poor Kanaya will be dabbing her eyes in the corner, all heartbroken over your broken body lying too still beside your blackrom romp in the sack while Jade chains up John for attempted murder. Attempted because you're both gods and would just come back to life in a short while, but still."

"You've either severely forgotten my past grimdark phase or you're giving John too much of a testosterone-induced upperhand in this little fantasy scenario of yours. John would never win in a duel against me. Windy powers or not."

"Yeah, well, I was trying to be nice to the guy in his absentee honor, especially since you banged his girl and he ain't going to be none too pleased about it."

"Assuming he finds out." Raising my chin delicately at Dave, my next words are icy. "He won't find out, will he?"

"It's not my place to say a peep. Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. My word of bond with the Hippocratic Oath and all that jizz. But since this is a mostly hypothetical discussion, as in none of what you've told me actually happened, hypothetically, then we should probably examine the hypothetical scenario involving John finding out. Or even Kanaya." Dave brushes his hair away from his forehead. "Hypothetically."

"Perhaps that's enough hypothetical scenario imagining for one day, Doctor Strider."

If he weren't such a stoic coolkid, I imagine Dave would have given me an eyeroll right then. He might have actually done it anyway beneath the safety of his eyewear.

"Fair enough, but one final question?"

"Proceed."

"How the hell have you managed to hide your hypothetical troll mauling marks from your girlfriend?"

Deep sigh. "Extraordinary carefully, and it has been a right pain in the ass to do so. I almost wonder if Kanaya can smell Vriska's scent on me because she's given me more than enough suspicious looks and questionings in the past three days then she ever has. She even attempted to acquiesce me into an outfit fitting, which I suspected was purely to investigate my person for any telltale signs of infidelity."

"Maybe you should put what you learned to some good use and get your mack on already with your girlfriend. Betcha that will stop making her suspicious."

"Or fluster her so terribly she blinds everyone aboard this rock with her luminescence. Or even worst, make her more suspicious." I sigh again.

"Nah, just approach it slowly. Shoving your tongue down her throat suddenly out of the blue would be hella suspicious. Just hit her with that frustratingly evasive Lalonde charm and Kanaya will be putty for you like she always is."

It's sound advice, the best Dave has offered me all day, but something still plagues at the back of my mind.

"What about Vriska?" I ask.

Sighing, Dave scratches a few beats out on his turntables until I think he won't answer. "Just, try not to think about her for now. Give yourself another day or two to heal up, because them trolls are fucking claw happy, am I right or what? And then make your move on Kanaya. Figure out Vriska afterward."

"... Thank you, Dave."

"Just doing my doctorly-slash-brotherly duties."

He pulls up his shades and winks at me before dropping them back into place and going back to work at his turntables. I sit and listen for a long time, absorbing the thrum of the music into my bones and letting it drown out all the drama from my love life.

*

I hum softly and Kanaya listens intently, hanging on to my every note even though she's as unfamiliar with the tune as I am with where exactly I learned it from. It's a sad tune I remember more from my early childhood than any time after, one I'm not quite sure of the words for, just the tune. Perhaps I had heard my mother playing it drunkenly in the wee hours of the morning on the piano, or maybe she hummed it as she tucked me into bed at night. Something about it had always lingered in my mind and more often than naught, I find myself humming it absently. Kanaya doesn't seem to mind though and actually perks up when she hears the tune as if it still surprises her that I am capable of something other than verbose discussions where I basically say nothing or softly mocking barbs of endearments.

Turning the nail-file in my hand, I work the smooth side now over Kanaya's recently trimmed fingernails. Claws is the more fitting term as I've seen her, in a rare fit of aggravation, perfectly cut fabric in two with them when she was unable to find her scissors. The thought reminds me of Vriska's nails and the marks they left on my person for well over a week, which was an excruciatingly difficult time of trying to hide the markings from my beloved. In the end, I had to hole myself up in my room, complaining I was not feeling well. The few times I allowed Kanaya in, to shirk off any suspicions, I remained a mummy beneath my blankets to hide both my infidelity remainders and my false proclamations of feeling ill. In honesty, I think it was nearly impossible for those at the God Tiers to catch illness anymore as myself and the others have been relatively runny nose free since our untimely demises and resurgences. That was only a theory though and Kanaya was not privileged to it.

"It would be nice, I believe, if you sang, even though your humming is nice. I like to hear your voice more," Kanaya comments as I finish polishing one hand and moving on to the next.

"And I would like an explanation as to why Dave is secretly obsessed with phallic objects, but alas, we all want something."

Gray fingers touch my cheek, drawing my attention away from the hand clenched in mine. Jade and black flecked irises study me calmly as the gray fingers slide across my cheek and against my jawline. I'm reminded, as I often am whenever I meet Kanaya's eyes, of my bottomless love for her. The wellspring in my chest that is eternally filled with her name, her smile, her touches, her kisses, and everything else that is her, overflows with all the words I know best describe my feelings for her although the most simplistic is the frustratingly and plain word 'love' that continually bobs around at the surface. My heart palpitates as she presses a soft kiss to my brow, her fingers carding through my hair.

"Rose, please sing for me?" she asks in a silky, soft voice that vibrates down to my core.

"Humans consider humming a form of singing," I say lightly.

Running a thumb over my bottom lip, smearing some of the black onto gray skin, Kanaya smiles. "Sing with words."

I'm extremely tempted to pull her thumb into my mouth and make lewd motions against it with my tongue, but I restrain myself and turn my attention back to her hand. Raising the file again, I touch it to a trimmed claw and open my mouth to sing. It's not anything amazing and I'm certain I'm at least two notes off key, but I sing the song anyway and focus on my work. Much like the tune I had been humming before, I had learned this song in the earlier part of my childhood, but unlike the other, I recall vividly my mother singing it. Mom didn't sing often, so when she did, I was apt to sit at attention and listen. True, she wasn't an excellent singer, better than I, but something about the tone of her voice when she sang always resonated in me and it was the only thing I would have admitted to back then that I openly liked. The song itself wasn't anything special though, just one of those ones you knew from repeated plays over the car radio, but neither Kanaya, nor a much younger I, cared.

When I'm done filing her nails down to something less dangerous, I kiss her fingertips between bits of lyrics. In return, Kanaya pulls me gently into her lap, thanks me for the excellent job of grooming her claws and the beautiful song, and kisses me. It's not exactly how I had planned for this all to go, to be honest, but I was undeniably content in wrapping my arms around her shoulders and losing myself against her lips.

Frankly, I realize later on when Kanaya has innocently dozed off with her head in my lap -- my plans to get beneath her skirt a bust -- that I am a coward, in more ways than one.

*

My hand is currently ensnared in a wanton coil of tentacle and Vriska's cheeks are wondrously flushed blue as I yank on the base. She looks like she's ready to come undone any second, her breaths rapid and heavy and gogdamn, I hate her so much but this is our third time together like this in the past month since the first rendezvous. I yearn to feel pathetic about this - about going to a person I hate to sate my sexual needs as opposed to going to the one I love so much that my heart and lungs burn when I'm in her presence. It's unprecedented and inane, but I don't feel badly about it, which is highly unusual, I believe. Dave mocks my cowardice and I can only quip back that blackrom does not constitute as cheating to a redrom troll partner. He disagrees, but we both know he's basing his judgment on human definitions of infidelity as opposed to the troll definitions, of which there is only a vague mention about keeping each of your quadrants filled with only one or two partners at any given time, preferably.

"Fuckkkkkkkk..." Vriska hisses heavily, her head hangs down to watch my hand at work on her tentacle. 

Truthfully, I still find myself arguing that it's not cheating by troll terms, but the argument is solely within in my head as I attempt to quash the ingrained human temperament toward it. 

Guilt taints my every breath despite self-assurances and arguments. Clearly I am not the best counselor for my emotions or whims, especially as I continuously repeat my clearly erroneous actions - or erroneous as I saw them, despite my attempts to rewire my brain into not seeing them as such.

Claws run against my hips and waistline; I shudder and resign myself to my sinful ways, moaning as the slimy tip of the tentacle wiggles itself free of my wrist enough to lash out at my clit. Again and again it happens, hitching my breath and making it hard to breathe in a satisfactory way. The tip presses firmly against my clit as Vriska rolls her hips against my hand and the motion is the closest to control she can manage over the independent wiggling appendage, forcing it to remain more or less pressed where I need it at. In kind, I tighten my grip on her and she makes a strange, low pitched clicking noise before her forehead drops forward against my shoulder. She misses taking out my eye with a horn by less than an inch.

"Lalonde," she sob-snarls.

We've done this enough for me to understand that she is close to the edge. Flexing my wrist causes the tentacle to easily slide off me and earn a growl. I take the opportunity to run my hand along her length, mindful to keep away from the tip that's still rubbing against me. Vriska tenses and slides her sharp teeth against my throat, claws sharp at my hip. My adrenaline kicks up several notches and I'm shivering through an orgasm a moment before she curses and my shins are back-splashed from where her genetic material hits the floor at our feet and splashes back up onto our legs. I tilt my head back against the wall and catch my breath, feeling her tentacle withdraw back into her, sliding against my hand as it goes.

After a moment, horns sway into my field of vision and I sigh inwardly. She pulls at my chin, tries to lean in to kiss my mouth, and I turn my face away. Placing the tips of my index, middle, and ring fingers against her forehead, I push Vriska away.

"Don't fucking kiss me," I say.

She makes a noise that's somewhere between a growl and a laugh. "Is that human guilt finally catching up with you?"

"It's none of your concern." I move away and grab a rag to wipe my lower half clean of the various fluids decorating it. A shower is in high order as soon as I can abscond from Vriska.

"It's stupid, and the sad thing is that you're aware of the fact that your shitty denial is just your dumb stubbornness at play." Vriska grabs my arm as soon as I pull on my shirt. We're both clenching our jaws when we face each other. "If you hate me, fine, I can deal with that. But if you hate me because you're feeling guilty about a human concept that means nothing to us trolls, then I'm going to be furious with you, and not in the fun calignous way."

I yank my arm away and finish dressing in silence, refusing to meet her eyes but feeling hers on me the whole while. It's so tempting to just leave in continued silence, but it feels wrong. Wrong because, yes, I am feeling guilty about what I consider to be cheating on my girlfriend, but wrong also because I don't necessarily feel bad about what I'm doing. That's the part of it I can't quite comprehend and it scares me more than anything I've faced before. There should be a mighty rage inside me at my indiscretions; a deep sorrow in my heart because I know I've wronged my beloved and can never repair the damage I've done. Even a melodramatic sigh of breath somewhere along the lines would suffice somewhat. Yet none of it is there and it's equal parts frustrating, confusing, and absolutely frightening.

Romance, I've come to learn, is a frightening experience.

Too much of yourself gets put out there for someone else to see in a regular human romance, but troll romance is worst because it's not just a sole partner that you share an intimate relationship with, it's two partners - three, if one really wants to get technical about how close Moirails are. For someone like me, that's three too many persons that can revel in the complexities and vulnerabilities of my carefully guarded heart and soul. It's difficult to convey this in words to someone I have strong feelings for, of the black or red kind. When I look up, and I mean look up, because Vriska, like the other trolls, is taller than me - wildly so in Kanaya and Gamzee's cases, though Vriska has an admirable amount of height to her - she's giving me a steady look that clearly states she's waiting for an answer. It actually pains me to consider not giving her one and just leaving like the coward I know I am. I glance at the door and bite back my fear for once.

"Just... I need time to set this all right in my head," I finally say to her in a surprisingly sincere tone.

She's silent for a moment, her expression unreadable. "Okay," she finally replies, surprisingly soft.

This time when she tries to kiss me, I let her. Briefly, and with a melodramatic sigh.

*

There's an idea that liquor of some sort is in order to drain away my fears and inhibitions enough to fully relay my feelings to Kanaya. I spend more time than what would be considered healthy on attempting to get the batch right. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagine my mother would be so proud of me, although I keep my imagination at bay. Memories of my mother still draw up too raw emotions in my psyche.

The end result is a nightmare. Why did I suspect it could be anything but? Countless frat parties have ended in disaster. Drunken teens getting into car accidents was one of the highest causes of car accidents when Earth was still a place. More sad sods than could ever be imagined had made drunken phone calls to exes in the middle of the night than there had been alcoholics in rehab. Yes, liquor was clearly a stupid idea.

I realize how horrible of an idea it was much later, when I'm fully conscious. I end up with a massive headache unlike that of which anyone in any space paradox has ever known, a lump on the back head to make the massive headache even worst, and the hazy memories of drunken confessions to my girlfriend-sprit that never should have left my mouth, ever. Perhaps it's a good thing I can't remember it fully, or perhaps not.

Before I even get there though, I'm in and out of consciousness for the better part of a day - or so Dave whispers to me at some point, but perhaps that's a dream. Occasionally, I recall waking up to hear Dave and Kanaya softly talking near my bed, someone's hand against my forehead, but everything is fuzzy and movement makes me nauseous so I deem movement utterly evil and continue to slip in and out of consciousness. Eventually, I wake up from a torrid of black dreams, bringing forth the pains described previously, and sit up slowly, pushing myself up by pressing against the headboard with my back. Kanaya is sitting quietly at the edge of my bed. I offer her a small smile in hopes of easing the worried expression on her face.

"Forgive me for worrying you," I say and cough, my throat dry. She hands me a cup of water from a nearby table and I drink it down with relish.

"How are you feeling?" she eventually ventures when I've drained the cup and handed it back to her. "You weren't feverish, but the concussion you sustained was of great concern for Dave and I. You also expelled your gastric sac onto my shirt when I lifted you up after falling down the stairs. It's nothing to concern yourself about, the smell and stain came out of my clothes easily."

I fight the urge to clasp my hands over my face and melt back into my bed with a rightful groan of horror.

"I apologize for failing to live up to the image of beneficence I've misled you to believe me to be. I understand fully if you are currently weighed down by heart-wrenching dissatisfaction at my uncouth behavior and the undignified expelling of my stomach's contents onto your person. Trust that I am beyond horrified by my actions and apprehensively await my punishment or otherwise disengagement of your status as my matesprit. As well, I apologize profusely."

A pained look flashes over Kanaya's face as she reaches out to unclench my hand from its death grip of my blanket. Holding it gently in-between her hands, her expression turns to one of deep pity and I understand in that moment I can do nothing to ever deter Kanaya from loving me. Even still, she slides closer to me and kisses the back of my captive wrist.

"Rose, you're rambling, and I find it a relief to hear it because it means you are well and that, darling, is all I care about. Your actions under the influence of the human sopor beverage were not entirely your own, I understand that, and I hold no malignancy toward what happened. I pity you so deeply and profoundly, Rose Lalonde, that you can do no wrong in my heart." 

She misconstrues my tears for happiness or perhaps even relief. Neither which could be further from the truth.

*

I decide to take some personal time from everyone, which is quite the feat aboard our limited space aboard this rock, but if Gamzee is capable of evading Kanaya's hunt for several years, then so can I gain uninterrupted privacy for an hour or two, or more. I end up in one of the rarely explored libraries deep in the interior of the Meteor. It feels cliché for a book connoisseur such as myself to end up hiding out in a library, but my feet automatically pick out the path of their own accord, and besides, it's nice and quiet I find once I get here. Only the glow of my candle cuts through the darkness, silence my only company. Something about it reminds me of my life before Sburb, when silence was my only company because my mother was too drunk in her lab to remember I existed or was lingering in whatever alternate dimension I use to imagine she would dart off to when no one was looking.

Silence and loneliness were my best friends back then.

It takes a while, lost in my thoughts as I was, to realize I recognize the library from an exploration with Kanaya last year. We already had so much to read that we had decided to hold off from pulling too many books from this library until we got through a chunk of our others. There's a table in a distant corner and beside it a single chair, forgotten by time. It creaks when I sit but doesn't protest further even when I tuck my legs up beneath myself in the process. Setting the candle on the table and pressing my head against the cold wall behind me, I close my eyes and try to sort my thoughts out. There's too many to sort and they vary so drastically in emotions from one to the next that I ultimately just focus on a single memory.

The one I settle on unsurprisingly is from way back when things were still new enough to believe I had possibly hit my head too hard on some overly polished surface of a wizard statue staff. I remember the first time I had decided, fully decided, to befriend Kanaya. Back then she was only grimAuxiliatrix to me, GA for repeated readability sake. Kanaya was jade letters against a white background back then, whereas now, she was black curls against white, luminescent skin, framed at the edges by soft touches of colorful cloth and fanged teeth. My body burns for her now whereas back then I was merely curious about these words that seemed to show concern for me, a complete stranger. 

Biting my lip and balling my hands into the fabric of my clothing at my knees, I wish silently that I had a cat to scritch my worries away right now. Now that I've allowed myself to think of Kanaya in a more intimate light, my thoughts wander to her naked and pressed beneath me, impossibly vulnerable to my soft, weak frame. Now that I have a full image of troll anatomy, my mind can fill in the blanks it couldn't two months ago. Fuck, this was supposed to be time to collect my thoughts and sort things out in my head about my surprising tumble into troll quadrants, but my feet touch the ground and my hand is sliding against my covered breasts of its' own accord. Without letting my thoughts stray to the fact that I'm considering getting off in a dimly lit abandoned library, the epitome of Poe, in my humble opinion, I press fingers to my mound as I imagine Kanaya's tentacle. The mental image is enough to make me softly gasp, hand sliding beneath my leggings as I imagine getting to my knees before her. I envision her tentacle wiggling in my grasp, coiling around my hand and the sound of Kanaya's breath when I lick a coil.

By now, my other hand is under my clothes, pinching a nipple as I press my index finger tightly against my clit. What would Kanaya's face be like when I slid the tip of the strange appendage into my mouth? Would her tentacle attempt to coil itself around my tongue? Around my uvula? I never bothered to taste Vriska's slime but I imagine Kanaya's would be unusually minty. Finger rubbing circles around my clit, I imagine getting her tentacle to behave enough to allow me to bob my mouth around it, taking in as much of her as I can. It's ultimately the mental image of looking up Kanaya's body to see her hands against her breasts and her gaze locked on me, bottom lip sucked between her fangs that sends me over the edge. My moans are soft and subdued but the shudder that runs through my being is intense, better than the orgasms Vriska has given me. Possibly, because this one doesn't contain some form of guilt attached to it, though now that I'm able to reflect, I feel dirty about my choice of location. Like I'm some deviant or some husband locked away quietly in a basement to enjoy a few frivolous moments of internet porn. Just as well, because in a sense, I was officially those sort of persons.

Moreso a coward. 

Wiping my hands clean on my leggings, I lean forward and clasp my hands together before me, only the fingertips touching. Staring at the space created between my hands, I allow myself to think about the problem at hand. Sleeping with Vriska is a moot point in my thoughts, one I quash away in order to focus on my own fears of sleeping with my girlfirend-sprit. I've read hundreds of books and articles on various forms of psychology. Freud's wikipedia page was my homepage back when there was still a thing such as Wikipedia. Even though I understood my reasons, understood the ways to overcome them - it's the actual experience of going through them that throws me off. Before, it was all theories and test studies, articles and advice written about other people, for other people. To face them on my own terms changed the meaning of everything I knew. 

It's not easy for a depressed person to stop being depressed just because they know they're depressed. Likewise, it's not easy for a highly guarded individual to just drop their walls and embrace the world, no matter how much love they have for it. Sex with Vriska was just that - sex. Sex, and an outlet for my anger at my inability to face my own emotions. The hatred I already felt for her simply flared and fed off of the anger, making Vriska easier to go to for intimate relations over Kanaya, especially because once we were done, we didn't cuddle or linger too long after.

And it is so fucking frustrating, really. 

After some time -- hours of it, perhaps -- a plan begins to form, aided by visions of possible outcomes and futures. It only needs courage from me to pull off. Courage, blessedly, is not the same as opening yourself up. It only means you have the gull to go forth with a decision. You don't pause despite your stomach-churning fears, but push forward; persevere in the face of danger, even if danger is your fear of loving someone completely and without reservation.

Time to stop being a coward, no matter how loudly every cell in my body screamed otherwise. Plus, my foresight revealed mostly fortuitous outcomes so the odds were in my favor. Things beyond my possible successes with Kanaya, however, weren’t as clear.

*

"What, might I ask, is the occasion for all of this? Not that I am in anyway put off or unappreciative of the perceived gesture. It's just all highly... Hell, Rose, should I be worried?"

The look on Kanaya's face is nearly comical. With a small smile, I shake my head slightly.

"Nothing to be concerned about, dear, I just wanted to try something different."

"The last time you wanted to try something different, I spent two weeks attempting to remove unsightly stains from the rugs in the lab."

It’s hard not to give her an eyeroll. "As if you were completely ignorant to the effects of alchemitized Cheez-Whiz?"

"That is not the point of my original query."

She looks slightly ruffled by my question though and I award myself yet another point over Kanaya. If one were to actually count up those points it would be fairly even matched, I think, with only myself ahead by a bit. Kanaya is a worthy adversary, which is part of my overall attraction to her. Entwining my fingers in hers, I tug her hand and step toward the small table in the center of the room. Atop it sits two candles casting a delicate glow over two plates of questionable food products that have been our few forms of sustenance. I pull out her chair and wait for her to understand the gesture before she thanks me and sits, blushing a delicate jade as she does so. Going around to the other chair, I seat myself and snap my fingers. From an unseen corner, and through an air vent, music begins to drift softly into the room, surprising her.

"This is..." Kanaya begins and pauses, fangs worrying her lip in thought. "Pleasant, albeit strange. What is this all about, and could you perhaps refrain from roundabout chasing of the barkbeast tail and give it to me in a straightforward manner? If that is not too much to ask?"

"I am willing to acquiescence your request. To put it in simple terms, this is a human date and it's nothing to concern oneself too much about. It's simply a traditional thing human mates enjoy doing together for fun."

Considering this carefully, her fang at work again at her lip, she nods her head. "Okay, Rose. I will go along with this human ritual as it seems harmless and I am hungry."

She smiles and it's hard not to return the gesture with another small one of my own. For a time we chat lightly and eat, pretending it's the finest delicacies from our home planets. We sip weak tea as if it's the finest wine and laugh at jokes we've told each other at least a dozen times before. The music continues, soft and light, effortlessly changing from one tune to another. Overall, the atmosphere is nigh perfect and we are both well relaxed and sated when the food runs out and the tea grows cold. Clearing my throat, I stand as the music changes to something a little more upbeat and hold out my hand to my girlfriend-sprit.

"Might I ask for your hand in a dance?"

"Dancing is neither one of our strongest points," Kanaya points out, taking my hand and standing.

"It doesn't matter so long as we enjoy the idea."

"Fair enough."

Stationing her hands on my hips, my arms on her shoulders, we take several practiced steps together that do not match the music in the slightest. Our hands change positions a bit later, our movements now more of an attempt at matching the music - it's pathetic, but neither of us comments on it. I can feel Kanaya's claws pressing lightly into my back and my fingers dig into her hips in response. Looking up at her, I can see she's genuinely enjoying herself and I'm glad for it. Her eyes meet mine and there are so many things unspoken in that moment that don't matter because they all mean the same thing.

Pity, admiration, adoration, fondness... Love. Love. Love.

So what if it's a catchall term for everything in my heart? In our hearts? It fits like a well-worn shoe, snug and comfortable and true.

Our lips meet softly, the kiss becoming something deeper in seconds. Kanaya lifts me up, her arm under my posterior; my arms around her neck. She walks us over to the couch without breaking the kiss, a feat easier for her as air is not a necessity for her. I find myself straddling her lap, kiss deepening as she runs her hands up my back to tangle in my hair. The song ends a moment later and by then it's a distant memory as my hands slide down her sides and find the hems of her shirts. There's a tremor of fear rising in my throat as I lift at it and it doesn't help that Kanaya breaks the kiss to stare at me wide-eyed, mouth slightly agape.

"Rose--"

"Before you continue, I have some things to say and it's important. I need you to just listen."

Her mouth closes and she nods, sliding her arms around my waist.

"I love you," I start, voice low and careful. "I am also quite terrified by this fact. Terrified in a way a child is terrified of the boogeyman at night, or the way a lowblood on your planet is terrified of being culled. I am more than vividly aware of how absurd this notion sounds. How can love be more terrifying than facing eldritch horrorterrors or being under their influence? For all my psychoanalyzing, I know the answers and yet it does not make it easier to deal with the incomprehensible fear firsthand."

Running my hand through her hair and against her cheek, I visually explore her face for the umpteenth time and feel a squeeze in my heart. I'm almost positive that the tender affection in her eyes is reflected in mine right now.

"I need you to know that loving you, as much as it terrifies me, will never stop me from loving you. I need you to know that sometimes I will hesitate to do or say things but it is never because I do not want to say or do them, unless I outright say so." 

Kissing her chastely, I smile and pull free one of her hands from my waist and press it against my cheek. 

"I need you to know, that I need you in every way possible of needing someone, even if I don't always pursue what my heart screams for me to pursue. I need you to understand that I won't always be there the way you might hope, but I am here." 

I press her hand now against my chest. "Kanaya Maryam, I love you, and I need you."

This time when I pull at her shirts, she merely raises her arms and allows me to pull them free of her body. My lips press against the hollow of her throat, her sternum, and then the round curve of her breast above the ridge of her bra. At this, she shudders but says nothing, only watches on in something akin to rapt fascination. Pressing a kiss to the other breast, I slide my hands upward along her sides and stomach, thumbs tracing the edge of her stomach wound before palming the undersides of her breasts. The bra divides my skin from hers and she sighs softly, a twinge of frustration in it. She blushes when she meets my eyes again, biting her lip in apology. I sigh in response, a playful sound to ease her worries. 

"May I?" I ask, slipping my fingers beneath the straps of her bra.

"Please," a sharp nod, "do."

My fingers slide down along her straps, following the edge of her bra beneath her arms and to her back. Despite all my careful movements, I am a nervous mess and it shows slightly when my fingers slip on the clasp of her bra. Somewhat disappointed at myself, I inhale deeply through my nose as I get it unclasp the second try and drag my fingers along the same path back up to her straps. Sliding them down, I follow one strap with small kisses to her shoulder and arm, taking a hold of her hand once she's free of the undergarment and kissing her wrist. My teeth, nowhere near as sharp as hers, bite at her pulse point sending a shiver through her whole being. This time she makes a noise, a chirping click in the back of her throat.

"Is that a happy sound?" I tease, dragging my teeth over her pulse point.

Kanaya makes another chirping click sound, followed by a strangled groan. The noises she makes leave me wanton and hungry for more of her, a familiar ache forming between my legs. I kiss her mouth again, tracing my hands lightly over her breasts, smiling when she shivers beneath my touch. It's painfully slow compared to being with Vriska, but I am, or rather, we are, nervous. Slow seems a fitting pace for this momentous event occurring between us. Still, a prickle of impatience brings my lips down to her breast, tongue against her nipple, and Kanaya suddenly seems more impatient and desperate that I imagined she’d be capable of. Naturally, the only conclusion for this has to owe to her months, if not years, of sexual frustration. I bite her nipple softly and she cries out, hips bucking. 

Looking up at her as I run my tongue around the stiffen nipple I've been toying with, I find Kanaya watching me intently -- her cheeks jade and mouth slightly open. The sight is much more beautiful than I had originally imagined. My impatience grows suddenly as I take her nipple into my mouth, still looking up at her, and slide my hand firmly against her mound, not even being couth about what I'm doing. She groans and clicks as I feel her unsheathe beneath my hand.

"Rose... Please..."

Kanaya slides her hand through my hair before settling it against the back of my neck. She looks ready to come apart and I've barely touched her. It is difficult to decide whether this is because she's wanted this moment for so long or because of our status as matesprits - I'll need to look it up when I can. Either way, she clicks and growls when I shift my legs and press my hand firmer through her skirt and panties against her trapped tentacle. Eyes closed and head thrown back, Kanaya can only click and occasionally groan out something that might be my name as my hand moves and my mouth takes her other nipple into my mouth. There's a bite of claws between my shoulders but it never bites in deep enough to draw blood, possibly because of the manicure I gave her the day before. Possibly, I was fond of giving her manicures in preparation for the day I would finally gather my courage for this very moment. Possibly.

There's a beautiful flush over her skin now just beneath the luminescence that keeps flickering on and off. When I drag her nipple between my teeth, she seizes beneath me, holding onto me as her mouth falls open in a silent cry. I can't see the mess, but I know Kanaya will not be wearing her favorite skirt tomorrow. The couch cushions are probably also in need of a wash as well. Ah well. 

When she's capable of coherency, Kanaya looks thoroughly embarrassed. I kiss her softly.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Yes," she replies, clearly flustered. "I fear that was a shameful display on my behalf, though."

"Mm, no, dear, it was lovely." I kiss her throat.

"You beguile me with words I find hard to believe."

"No, I'm telling you the truth." Taking her hand, I bite my lip and bring it up beneath my skirt. Kanaya blushes when her fingertips touch my damp panties. We both blush when I move the crotch to the side and press her fingers against me so she can feel the full weight of my arousal. "See?" I whisper huskily.

"Oh," she says absently; shocked. She licks her lips and meets my gaze. "May I...?"

"Please."

Fingers hesitate before bending and pushing inside of me. Her name is a moan on my lips as she pushes in deeper, two fingers filling me perfectly. My body shudders violently as a tremble of anticipation washes over me. Kanaya hesitates again when her fingers are all the way in and I lift my hips and bring them down to indicate what I want. I sigh when her fingers begin to move, my arms encircling her shoulders and neck. For a few moments we continue this until I cry out her name and bury my face into her throat as I come. It's a shadow of the orgasms I've reached with Vriska, but it's filling in a way I’ve never felt with her. It also leaves me hungry for more.

"May we continue this on something more expansive, such as my bed?" I ask.

"You can go again already?"

"Love, I believe I have some things to teach you about humans."

*

I have enough decency to wait until the next morning before I confess my sins. 

Kanaya yawns and stretches in bed, looking lovely all sleepy and ruffled against my sheets. Handing her a cup of tea, I sit cross-legged on the bed opposite of her, tucking the long shirt I'm - only - wearing between my legs to cover any naked bits from showing. I don't miss the disappointed look on my girlfriend-sprit's face at this. She sits up against the headboard, forgoing her modesty and making it hard for me to meet her eyes when her breasts are so perfectly on display before me. Her gray flesh is decorated in several dark green marks, especially in the area of her breasts and throat. I feel pleased with my work. We share morning greetings and I allow her to sip at her tea for a few silent moments before I open my mouth.

"I must make a confession."

She sets her cup down on her covered lap and looks on with curiosity.

"I slept with Vriska."

Her eyebrows raise and I hold up my hand for her to allow me to finish. It's hard enough to admit any of this and I know if she speaks, I'll lose my nerve.

"I actually seem to have entered into a calignous relationship with her, as well. It hadn't been my intent, but it happened and I've been feeling... quite conflicted on the matter."

"How so?" she asks lightly.

"I don't feel as regretful for it as one would expect to, and I love you so much that it is infuriating to understand how I'm capable of sleeping with someone else and not regret it. I've felt only guilty about denying you the pleasure I was experiencing. The pleasure I had been repeatedly denying you for gog knows how long. I am unendingly apologetic to you, Kanaya."

"This is a serious matter, Rose."

My stomach twists and I feel my features drop enough to reveal my worry; my fear.

"I am quite jealous of the fact that you've been able to fill three of your quadrants. Four, if you follow through with your drunken ideal of auspicing Terezi and Gamzee."

"What?"

Mindful of her tea, Kanaya moves closer to me and smiles, reaching up and tucking some of my hair behind my ear. "I have a feeling Vriska has already explained how having more than one partner is not deemed cheating to trolls. Never once have I said anything about your moirallegiance with Dave, have I? And it does count as a moirallegiance in troll terms, before you argue it isn't. What makes you think I would say anything about you carrying on a calignous relationship with Vriska if I've been perfectly fine, as I just stated, with your moirallegiance with your brother? I'm surprised, yes, but pleased for you all the same. Also, as I previously stated, I am quite jealous."

"That is quite a strange thing to wrap my feeble human mind around you know, especially this early in the day and after so long of struggling with the idea to begin with. Also, likely because of the mind shattering orgasms I had last night."

Leaning over the bed to set her cup on the floor, Kanaya crawls to me on all fours, the blanket sliding away to reveal more of her skin for my hungry eyes. She smiles at the frown I shoot her.

"I know it's unusual for you, but trust when I say it's fine. It's fine to you as well, you indicated as much when you said you did not feel guilty about your time spent with Vriska. I assume you don't feel guilty about spending time with Dave either, so in all, Rose, you have nothing to worry about."

Her lips press against mine as her hands slide against my bare thighs. Dave's words from weeks ago saying that I over complicate things come back to mind in that moment and I sigh against her mouth. It feels too easy, but it's hard to argue with the way she's pushing me onto my back, her hands pushing up my shirt. Perhaps I am over complicating things, but it still doesn't feel that way. It feels like I've been pardoned for genocide and instead of facing a firing squad, I am getting the key to the city. Troll quadrants and views on romance will likely confound me forever, but at least Kanaya doesn't hate me. 

A few moments later, when I'm panting beneath her, her beautiful, slightly jade colored tentacle wiggling about inside of me as our hips move together, pinpricks of tears spill from my eyes. I clench her shoulders tightly and sob into her neck from the overwhelming emotions I'm feeling concerning just about everything.

"I love you," I pant into her ear through my tears.

"I love you too, Rose," Kanaya breathes into my hair.

Despite my tears, the moment is perfect.

*

"Look at them all whispering over there," Dave says in a low voice. He's not easily rattled, but something about Terezi, Vriska, and Kanaya grouped together around a table and chatting in low voices puts a dent in his coolkid demeanor. It's a riveting thing to see Dave shaken up.

It would be a misrepresentation if I said I didn't feel somewhat put off by it as well. Only, I was much better than my brother at masking my concern.

"You know they're taking about us, right? Probably chuckling at how little genetic material we expel or some Troll-only funny thing like that."

"You're quite the paranoid one, aren't you?"

"Like you're not? You're sleeping with two of them. That makes you more the target of weird troll gossip. You should be flipping all kinds of pirouettes off this rock."

"I trust Kanaya wouldn't divulge too much personal information about our sexual provocations."

"How do you know? Oh, wait, nevermind. You have that chick wrapped around your pinky. What's your secret? Threatening to be silent around her?"

"Secret? There is no secret, brother dear. Only mutual respect between two mature individuals." A smile plays at my lips. "And I wear the metaphoric pants in the relationship."

Dave snorts. "Yeah, I bet you do, but what about Vriska?"

I purse my lips a moment before answering. "Kanaya will keep her from saying too much about me, if need be. In the event that fails, I'll rip her wings off the next time I get her alone. She may not be able to die easily, but she can hurt, and those wings will not regenerate without her dying first, something we all rather avoid even if we can regenerate, yes?"

"I know I've said this before, or something similar to it, but you're kind of scary sometimes."

"Thank you."

"Wasn't really a compliment, but whatever." He falls silent for a moment, pressing his lips together tightly when Terezi cackles extra loud. "Why can't I wear the pants in my relationship?"

"For a multitude of reasons, I'm sure. One theory could assess that Terezi is simply the stronger one, physically of the two of you."

"Like you could hold a chance of winning an arm wrestling match with Kanaya or Vriska?"

"Another theory is that despite your stoic facade, inside, you're a soft ball of mush that Terezi can easily roll around between her fingers."

"Shit, when you say it like that you make me sound like a--"

"A pussy?" I smirk without looking away from Kanaya's profile. "Brother dear, women push babies out of their pussies. Our pussies can withstand the penetration from our male and alien partners and their frenzied climatic poundings."

"Ew, Rose, I don't want the visuals associated with my sis telling me this."

"And we bleed through our pussies for three to seven days every month without dying. In short, being called a pussy is more of an indication of one's strength and should not hold a negative connotation with it."

"...But you meant it in a negative way, didn't you?"

Kanaya catches my eye and smiles before laughing at something Terezi says. Vriska, likely having noticed Kanaya's action in my direction, shoots me a glare that I return in kind. We both flash the faintest of smiles and turn away from each other.

"Embrace what you are, Dave, for better or worse."

"Ugh, you flighty broads are a bit too much sometimes," Dave sighs.

"Imagine how boring your life would be if you didn't have this constant challenge in communication in your life every day."

"You mean how much less difficult my life would be if I didn't have to spend all my time puzzling out the shit you ladies tell me. Is being born female mean you have to come with a prerequisite against giving a straight answer. Like, do you gals just chill in the womb, or egg, and go 'oh shit, fuck ever giving anyone a straight answer, ever!' or is this just a learned trait you gals learn behind the guys' backs just to fuck with us? Is the girl's bathroom really a classroom with books on the art of confounding men and you all watch grainy educational videos about how much Jane gets off on making Dick go bald prematurely from him yanking out his hair in frustration? Is that like a thing that happens? Because it would certainly explain why you ladies like to go to the bathroom in flocks together."

"Dave, you're rambling yet again. I believe," I grin because it's hard not to, "you are unnecessarily over complicating a very simple thing. You're Terezi's bitch and that, I believe, is all there is to say on the matter."

Dave gawks and I can feel the weight of his shaded view. Kissing his cheek, I excuse myself so to avoid openly laughing in his face. That would be a low blow to his manly pride, after all.

Troll based quadrants aren't really all a bad thing, I think as I head over to the chatting trolls and place my hand on my girlfriend-sprit's shoulder. Kanaya smiles at me and lays her hand over mine.

"I hate to butt in, but I require Kanaya's assistance with something. My apologies, ladies."

As Terezi nods, I smile over her head at Vriska. "See you tonight, Vriska."

"Whatever," she scoffs even as Terezi begins to howl with laughter and drubs her cane against her leg, wiggling her eyebrows up and down.

Lowering my voice, I whisper to Terezi as Kanaya gathers herself from the chair. "And I shall see you and Gamzee in three days. Do remind him for me."

She nods sharply and continues to drub away until Vriska snarls and attempts to snatch the cane away, making Terezi laugh-cackle harder. I turn and walk by a quiet Dave with Kanaya's hand in mine. When we're both completely alone, I pin her against a wall and kiss her.

"Is this what you need my assistance with?" Kanaya asks a moment later.

"No, but it's a start." I bring our still clenched hands between the two of us to give her a better idea of what is meant.

"Ever since you've filled all your quadrants, you've become much more animate, Rose."

"No," I say, kissing her jaw, "you're clearly imagining it. Possibly I've been expelling too much of your energy and bodily reserves with my newfound sexual whims?"

She blushes. "No, I don't believe so, and I am quite sure I am not imagining it, but I will let the topic drop in lieu of engaging in more sloppy makeouts with you at this moment in time. If that is permissible?"

"Quite permissible indeed."


End file.
